The Verdon Gorge , in south-eastern France (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), is a river canyon that is considered by many to be Europe's most beautiful. It is the world's second largest gorge, at about 25 kilometers in length and up to 700 meters deep. It was formed by the Verdon River, which is named after its startling turquoise-green colour, one of the canyon's most distinguishing characteristics. The most impressive part lies between the towns of Castellane and Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, where the river has cut a ravine up to 700 metres down through the limestone mass. At the end of the canyon, the Verdon river flows into the artificial lake of Sainte-Croix-du-Verdon.

Because of its proximity to the French Riviera, the canyon is very popular with tourists, who can drive around its rim, rent kayaks or hike. The limestone walls, which are several hundreds of meters high, attract many rock climbers. It is considered an outstanding destination for multi-pitch climbing. There are routes encompassing cracks, pillars and seemingly endless walls. The climbing is generally of a technical nature, and there are over 1,500 routes, ranging from 20m to over 400m.

The Verdon Gorge is renowned as forming the most beautiful canyon in Europe, and attracts numerous tourists, especially during the summer period. It is easily accessible on its right bank from the North (via route D952 from Castellane to Moustiers-Sainte-Marie), and on its left bank from the South (via routes D71, D90 and D995 from Aiguines to Castellane).

The southern route offers views of the Col d'Illoire, the summits of Plein Voir, le Pavillon (1624 m), la cime de Barbin (1560 m) and le Mourre de Chanier (1930 m), and the Saint-Croix reservoir. The "Sentier de l'Imbut" hike begins from this side of the gorge. When the road passes through the Tunnel du Fayet, there are openings cut into the tunnel to afford a view. The road then crosses the Artuby River over a bridge known either as Pont de l'Artuby or Pont de Chaulière; soon after, at the relais de Balcon, the Artuby flows into the Verdon. This area is also known as the "Mescla," meaning "mixture" in Provençal.

On the D90 in the direction of Trigance, another bridge spans the Jabron river (another tributary of the Verdon) and then the Pont des Soleils. Just below Rougon there is the Couloir Samson (Samson's Corridor), the entrance to the part of the fluvial landscape designated as "gorge." From there one can hike along the Verdon and take the famous "Sentier Martel." La Palud-sur-Verdon, a village with museum and tourist bureau, is nearby; the "route des Crêtes" (Crest Route, linking various panoramic viewpoints) proceeds from here. The Sentier Martel also is accessible from this route, beginning at the French Alpine Club or "châlet de La Maline." This path covers over 100 km of not always easy roads.

The Verdon Gorge is an appreciated destination for rock climbers, since they include more than 1,500 climbing routes on good limestone rock. The Verdon and her Gorge is also a favoured destination for fishermen, particularly for fly fishing. Hiking, Canoeing, paragliding, rafting, climbing and of course Canyoning are some of the numerous sports practiced in the region.

credited to wikipedia and flickr users: loutraje, pl_photo, glosters, muora_lycia, schseb, kunstturner, felixgein, elcantar, andrequylaine2, koen_photos

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Golf is about knowing one’s limitations, and when the conversation turns to course architecture my strategy is to reach for the rescue club of scepticism and invite you to play through. Nicklaus, Norman, Ballesteros – architects? Aren’t they just retired champions who sell their names to golf clubs aspiring to top-dollar status?

So it was with a nervous glance over my shoulder, to make sure no one I knew was listening, that I took the professional aside after a round at Les Bordes, a ravishingly beautiful course in France near Orléans, and asked: who designed this masterpiece, and what else has he done?

Robert von Hagge, was the answer. “And if you like his work, you have to go to Strasbourg and play the Kempferhof.”

Alsace? Golf? It seemed a rather far-fetched idea. But when a friend announced that he had retired to run a hotel in Strasbourg and work on his handicap at “le Kempf”, I booked in for the next available weekend.

“Welcome to my garden!” said Jean, when we shook hands on a warm Friday afternoon. “This is where I come to refresh my spirit [being French, he speaks like this]. Do you see the heron? With luck, my kingfisher friend will meet us at the 7th, and, please, listen to the silence. Isn’t it incredible to have this on my doorstep, so close to the centre of Strasbourg?” Yes, and only 15 minutes from the airport.

With an artist’s relish for the tension between green and pleasant surroundings and the inner turmoil of white-knuckle risk-reward golf, von Hagge has put together a remarkable course, full of charm and changes of mood. Instead of a succession of expanses of water that require hitting over – though there are a few of these – he prefers the sluggish waterway lurking behind a screen of trees.

The front nine is wooded, tight and decidedly intimidating, but there are more spacious holes to look forward to on the way home, for a chance to swing freely before a blind lake hole twists the knife at the end. As with many of these trophy courses, if you’re on your game you’ll love it. If not, you may come away cursing von Hagge and all his works.

The Hof itself is a 17th-century manor house, recently converted to a small hotel. It makes an elegant backdrop to two of the more fiendish water holes and one could stay here in some comfort, overlooking the misfortunes of those in peril on the tee and not leaving the premises all weekend. But the movie-themed bedrooms might be a bit gimmicky for some tastes and I was more than happy to settle for the bachelor modernism of Jean’s hotel, the Dragon, which is perfectly placed for exploring old Strasbourg – strolling the banks of its waterways, visiting the cathedral and enjoying the après-golf in the restaurants.

Any prejudice we may have about Alsace being not really French will only be reinforced by a visit to the region’s second-string course, Soufflenheim. In fact, on reaching “Golf Club Baden Baden” we could be forgiven for imagining we had crossed the border by mistake. The membership is 90 per cent German and the cluster of neat villas and apartment buildings has the look of a well-appointed staff college.

Soufflenheim’s golfing offer is nothing if not comprehensive: a junior course, a beginners’ course, an academy, and an 18-hole stinker designed by Bernhard Langer. It strikes a serious, almost solemn, note: long, tough, no-nonsense golf with severe punishment – usually water – if we stray from the straight and narrow.

The clubhouse lunch is outstanding, though, and most of the trade consists of French golfers enjoying lunch on expenses. The German golfer eats sandwiches on the way around.

The other thing I liked about Soufflenheim was its reduced rate if you tee off before nine. This is a fine arrangement for the golfer who wants to play at the double before an honest day’s toil, or, if on holiday, combine golf with something else: a potter down the prettiest wine route in France, perhaps, with its cobbled villages, timbered houses and storks’ nests… or even another golf course.

The discount may reflect an idiosyncrasy of the local climate: morning mist, as encountered at another highly rated course near the Rhine, Wantzenau. On a morning when one struggled to see the flag from the fringe of the green, golf was a hiding to nothing. We saw enough to understand the nature of the challenge, though: water, everywhere.

On such a day one needs a course raised above the floor of the Rhineland plain. There is one near Colmar, at Ammerschwihr, which would fit in well with a wine tour, but the golf is better at Hagenthal, in a pleasant pastoral setting of rolling farmland close to the Swiss border and Basel. Completing the Alsatian melting pot theme, Hagenthal is a Swiss club on French soil: at “Country Club Bale” the atmosphere is quite private, though not unfriendly.

The architect here was another German Bernhard – von Limburger. Questions may have been asked about his role as golf architect by appointment to the Third Reich, but I couldn’t help liking the man. Having rarely been more than a whisker away from the water at Soufflenheim, Kempferhof and Wantzenau, it came as a relief to play a course with only a couple of small ponds to worry about. Nor was von Limburger a trigger-happy bunker man, preferring the strategically placed tree to complicate our work. I think he understood human frailty better than Langer.

There is a good little hotel at Hagenthal, the Jenny, so Alsace has the makings of a good golf tour from Basel to Strasbourg or vice versa. Whether you choose to wrap it up with the challenge of the Kempferhof or Hagenthal’s stroll in the park, you can miss your last putt 90 minutes before take-off and still have time to sink one at the 19th.

Getting there

French Golf Holidays (01277 824100; www.frenchgolfholidays.com ) offers four nights’ b&b at Le Kempferhof with one dinner and four green fees at Kempferhof (two rounds), Wantzenau, and Soufflenheim from £599 per person including Channel Tunnel for a car and four passengers. Fly-drive and alternative accommodation also offered. British Airways (08444 930787; www.ba.com ) has flights from Heathrow to Basel from £106 return.

Further information

Hôtel du Dragon, Strasbourg (0033 3883 57980; www.dragon.fr ), doubles from £61; Hôtel Kempferhof (8898 7272; www.golf-kempferhof.com ) has a golf package: three nights’ b&b, one dinner, two green fees from £485; Hôtel Jenny, Hagenthal le Bas (8968 5009; www.jenny-hotel.com ), doubles from £56.

Green fees Kempferhof, €90-120; Soufflenheim (8805 7700; www.golfclub-soufflenheim.com ), €40-95; Wantzenau (8896 3773; www.golf-wantzenau.fr), €55-70; Bale-Hagenthal (8968 5091; www.gccbasel.ch ), €80-120.

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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How pleasant it is to step onto Eurostar in St Pancras and shimmy off to France so smoothly that your complimentary Champagne barely ripples in the glass. A change of platform at Lille and you're heading south on the TGV, to the blue skies of Avignon and the vineyards of Provence.

Every time I travel by high-speed train I think "Why don't I do this more often?" Flying has become such an ordeal, along with the guilt that you're contributing to global warming. So, starting with the train, this holiday (in spring 2008) has a carbon neutral agenda. How green can we go?

When we arrive in Avignon, we bypass the car-hire desk and instead, jump into a local taxi that takes us through lush vineyards to the ancient duchy of Uzès. From here, my husband Nick and I banish all further forms of transport. We will be travelling on foot, following the line of the crumbling Roman aqueduct over the famous Pont du Gard and then onwards to the stone stronghold of Castillon-du-Gard – 20 miles in all, three days on foot.

"You're absolutely sure about not having to walk with all our stuff on our backs?", my husband asks again as we speed uphill into Uzès. I am sure. Our luggage will be whisked ahead of us every day. Walking holidays arranged by Inntravel are not, mercifully, about privation. And so to our king-size bed in the medieval hotel's attic suite, after a promisingly indulgent dinner involving pâté de foie gras and a velvety Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

Uzès is a well-heeled, good-looking tourist town full of tasteful boutiques and junk shops. But on Saturday it explodes into a rumbustious Provençal market that is clearly the local event of the week. The central square is packed, the streets fanning off it are tunnels of red and mustard awnings; there is even a mobile jazz band. Here we find lavender soap, pottery, asparagus, cherries, goat's cheese, saucissons, rotisserie, oysters, haricots verts, cotton frocks, sandals, jewellery, honey…

And so we begin our walk weighed down by half a roast chicken, a hunk of pain de campagne, a slab of oozing Brie de Meux, fresh goat's cheese, tomatoes, a handful of rocket, a bag of cherries, two ripe peaches – and a stick of honey and almond nougat (the Provençal equivalent of Kendal Mint Cake). We also have rather stylish new hats: a very satisfactory start to the day.

The night's torrential rain has left the countryside steaming and unfurling with greenery: we brush past poppies, cornflowers, vetch and fragrant wild honeysuckle, down narrow lanes, past a series of stone water mills, gradually limbering up and finding our pace. Neither of us are avid walkers – nor, it must be said, particularly fit. I have chosen this route as one of Inntravel's most "relaxing" walks (no punishing mountains), but it turns out to be relaxing in the most profound sense of the word.

As I march along through the gently changing scenery, swinging my arms and breathing sweetly pure air, I feel my whole being relax and my mind wheel free. We don't talk much, but when we do, it's about interesting stuff. Who'd have thought it?

Unusual, too, to fall upon a picnic lunch with such determined hunger. Half a chicken disappears in minutes as we sit under poplars by a waterfall. We had thought we might cheat, if the going got tough, and call a taxi for the second half of the day. But despite Nick's blister (he is wearing his work shoes), he's keen to press on uphill into the garrigue – the rocky scrubland that covers so much of this region, tufty with wild rosemary, thyme, sweet-smelling dog rose and pink cistus.

And so we clamber uphill along stony red paths, past butterflies and rasping cicadas, emerging at the top of a wooded gorge with our hearts beating fit to explode. And there we have the sight of our lives. Drifting over our heads, supremely casual, come a pair of giant Bonelli's eagles, their hooked beaks and cruel talons clearly visible.

From there it's on to our next hotel where we'll rest for a day, the family-run Hostellerie le Castellas in the stone village of Collias, a supremely stylish, yet gloriously eccentric affair. Our bathroom is paved with cobblestones, has a mirrored ceiling and a Roman marble bath (most welcome after 10 miles on foot). Our Michelin-starred meal comes on a series of square plates: tiny shavings of this and that, mousses and foams and timbales of exquisite flavour and audacious design.

Nick is nervous that our next picnic, provided by the hotel, will be similarly nouvelle. But we're given sturdy stuffed baguettes, which see us through more vineyards and up into the garrigue, then down to an arresting sight: the Pont du Gard, its symmetrical, tiered arches marching purposefully over the green River Gardon. This is the jewel of the ambitious 31-mile aqueduct built by the Romans in 19BC, carrying water to the strategic city of Nîmes.

Today it's a big Provençal attraction with an absorbing visitor centre (the bridge alone, we learn, took 500 men three years to build) – but after all that solitude in the hills we've become slightly allergic to crowds. So we return to our walking notes and find ourselves following the aqueduct overland: a crumbling series of low arches dipping and rising, somehow all the more thrilling for its isolation and decay.

I collapse by the pool at our final, honeyed-stone hotel, taking in the long views of serene vineyards and purple hills. My body aches – but in a good way. It's been ages since I really learned something on holiday; more still since I got fit. If carbon neutral travel means stopping to smell the wild roses, then I am an avid convert.

credited to flickr users: feuillu, imapix, masmanimages, catchanel, la_route, langkawi, benteholst, 6eyes, paspog, fotoart1945, eagle-ffm, jasperdo, frenchlandscapes, jacky830, bas_van_gaalen, mike_blanchette and telegraph.co.uk

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It is known that Paris is one of the most beautiful cities of Europe. Love, tradition, romance ... all that is harmoniously connected in one harmonious whole. Night ... in this city must be beautiful. See next picture and consider whether you want to live there.

credited to wikimedia

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Fort Boyard is a fort located between the Île-d'Aix and the Île d'Oléron in the Pertuis d'Antioche straits, on the west coast of France. It is 61 metres long, 31 metres wide, and its walls are 20 metres high.

The construction of the fort was first considered during a build-up of the French armed forces undertaken by Louis XIV between 1661 and 1667, but Vauban, his leading military engineer, famously advised against it, saying "Sire, it would be easier to catch the moon with the teeth than take on such an endeavour in such a location".

Construction of the fort did not begin in earnest until 1801, under Napoleon, in order to protect the coast (and especially the arsenal of Rochefort) from possible incursions by foreign (and especially British) navies. At that time, cannons only had a limited range, and the distance between the two islands of Aix and Oleron was too large to block the passage.

Following difficulties in establishing a firm base (stone blocks had to be installed on the sandy sea bed during low tide, where they could still sink under their own weight) the project was suspended in 1809. Construction resumed in 1837, under Louis-Philippe, following renewed tensions with Great Britain. The fortifications were completed in 1857, with sufficient room for a garrison of 250 men.

However, by the time of its completion, the range of cannons had markedly increased, making the fort unnecessary for national defense.

Under the Paris Commune of 1871, Fort Boyard was briefly used as a prison, before being abandoned a few years later. Over time, the fort slowly crumbled and deteriorated into the sea as it was left unmaintained.

In 1961 the Commune sold the fort to the département of Charente-Maritime. Six years later, the final scene of the French film Les Aventuriers was filmed at the remains of the fort.

In 1988, restoration work commenced on Fort Boyard, in order to prepare it for a television game show, also named Fort Boyard. The fort was electrified and a contraption similar to an oil rig has been installed on the side in order to facilitate access to television crews. Restoration on the fort finished in 1989 and filming commenced in 1990. Fort Boyard has been used as the set for the show to this present day.

credited to wikipedia and aerotourisme.info, lagiraudiere.com, villesvillages.free.fr, perso.orange.fr and flickr users: ir.michael, chihmingchang

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